Bigger home park OK’d

Rogers Mobile Home Park will be expanded at 10221 E. I-70 Dr. NE, the Boone County Commission decided Tuesday night in its monthly meeting with the Boone County Planning and Zoning Commission.

A crowd gathered in opposition to the park’s expansion, citing problems with sewage, traffic and limited recreation areas. Despite the concerns, the expansion was approved 2-1, with Skip Elkin, District II commissioner, casting the dissenting vote.

The request, filed and appealed by Kent and Vicki Gilbane, had previously been denied 5-2 by the Planning and Zoning Commission in its May 20 meeting.

Gilbane intends to add 38 single and five doublewide areas for homes. He has said he will monitor the development, take care of landscaping maintenance and reduce potential parking problems by creating a designated parking area.

“What he is proposing on paper, given the right location in Boone County, might work, but I don’t feel this is the right location,” Elkin said.

Karen M. Miller, District I commissioner, was in support of the decision. “We need mobile home parks,” she said. “We have become very elitist in this community, and we forget we need a place for workers to live.” Presiding Commissioner Keith Schnarre echoed Miller’s statements.

The Planning and Zoning Commission had requested that the developer create a landscaping plan, including a tree buffering area, present a grating plan for drainage, develop a recreation area of 5,000 square feet and prevent glaring light in the evenings. Gilbane agreed to all of these conditions.

Neighbors said traffic and diminished land value were their primary concerns.

Phillip Popham, a resident of the area, said the school system would be affected immediately, and sewage would become a problem during periods of rain. “This will change the land and the community as the way it stands now,” Popham said at the meeting.

There is currently no public transportation or children’s entertainment in the area, which had many residents worried that children living in the proposed expanded park would play along the access road, where there have been numerous car accidents in the past.

Also, the road leading into the park is not public, meaning police cannot regularly patrol the area.

The commission also heard another appeal: Rajiv Shah’s request to rezone his property from C-N, Neighborhood Commercial, to M-LP, Planned Industrial, and to approve a review plan for Leatherwood Hills Planned Development on 1.65 acres, located at 1641 W. Route K in Columbia. The commission approved the request unanimously.